Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which has GPU core speed of 1018 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 295X2		21205 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 13244 (166%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be 167% faster than the Radeon R9 280 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 400000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be much (approximately 243%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 253840 (243%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100448 (336%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.